


O(log n) where n is my heart rate next to you

by girltalk



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M, Post-Break Up, loose westworld fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-12 11:19:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15994124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girltalk/pseuds/girltalk
Summary: Taeil looks surprised. Awkward. Eyes darting to the side like he’s considering whether or not walking out into the rain would suffice as a response. But still, there’s a curl to his mouth, like he can’t help but be flattered.Shit, shit, shit.It’s so exactly like him.





	O(log n) where n is my heart rate next to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colouring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colouring/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Big (Little) Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11450805) by [colouring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colouring/pseuds/colouring). 



> very very loosely inspired by westworld, largely inspired my lee sooman's galaxy brain, but mostly inspired by my recipients lovely original fic! please read it! it's adorable and fluffy and i'm sorry i've made it into... this. 
> 
> this fic is tagged as canon divergent, but the only canon is that most of them (except yuta) were all sm trainees at one point. i know i vague'd with a lot of this, but hopefully it isn't too confusing!
> 
> warnings at the end notes!

“The first date,” Jaehyun had said, as he rubbed the cologne against the base of Johnny’s throat back at his apartment, “is always the most awkward.”

Johnny feels this; his palms are damp from more than the spring rain that weighs down the air and sloshes along the sidewalk. He holds his umbrella higher above his head. It’s a crowded footpath, but Johnny’s not sure if it’s his height that makes it as though he’s looking down at the scuffle beneath him like a God, or the self-consciousness he can’t shake off.

Jaehyun had chosen the place, had helped set everything up after Johnny had told Yuta he wasn’t going to do anything more than show up. Considering the circumstances, Jaehyun did well. Office workers in twisted ties and holding briefcases over their heads push their way around him. A woman in heels and a dainty pair of gloves hails down a yellow cab. He passes an alleyway, and underneath a fire-escape, a group of elementary school kids play hopscotch and throw around a tennis ball. Johnny had always joked that Jaehyun was the first robot with a soul, and he wonders what it means then that they both crave romance in the very things that make human life so mundane. Locked eyes on a jammed train. Scalding coffee seeping through a white shirt. Hot love in a cold city. 

It’s then that Johnny spots Taeil, standing at the pedestrian lights with a guitar case strapped to his back. His shoulders are squared together and his head bowed low against the rain like a beg for mercy. 

Johnny swallows thickly. _Jesus fucking Christ,_ he thinks. _What am I doing._

Before he can second guess himself—think too hard about how his mum had raised him with integrity, how he’d been a popular kid at school with lots of friends and even a girlfriend who probably didn’t know what love meant but tried her best to give it back—he trudges towards Taeil, hands clumsy as he moves the umbrella to cover both their heads. 

It takes Taeil a second to react. He turns his palm up, crooking his head to squint at the red canopy over him. When he registers the rain hadn’t stopped of its own accord, he looks up at Johnny and smiles. “Thank you,” he says, almost bashfully. 

And Johnny is struck still. Taeil’s smile, the red tip of his nose—it’s like receiving a gift that’s so expensive it's become a burden. An act of charity that leaves you in debt forever. Taeil’s cordiality falters with Johnny’s silence, hands coming up to grip the strap of his guitar case like it’s a shield. 

Johnny clears his throat. “Are you headed to the subway?” He asks. He feels like it comes out pained, but Taeil nods like nothing’s amiss. “Can I walk you there?”

Taeil looks surprised. Awkward. Eyes darting to the side like he’s considering whether or not walking out into the rain would suffice as a response. But still, there’s a curl to his mouth, like he can’t help but be flattered. _Shit, shit, shit._ It’s so exactly like him. 

“Sure, I’d like that.”

Johnny’s going to be paying for this for the rest of his life. 

 

-

 

Twenty-three hadn’t been a great year for Johnny. 

If it were a Yuta Year, he thinks it might have counted as a bare minimum sort of success. After all, he visited home twice; learnt how to cross stitch; adopted a cat from the animal shelter; dated a nice girl for two months that he still snapchats—all things Yuta could benefit from. 

As a Jaehyun Year, it’d have been a letdown. In the middle of July, Johnny spends a week camping out at Lake Michigan with his younger cousins. They sleep in a tent that they’d pitched perfectly and laugh at the fact that a third of Johnny’s legs still stick out, vulnerable to the elements. On the fourth day, it’s lazy and humid, and his youngest cousin slips while running along the bank and hits his head against a rock. 

Jaehyun flies straight to Chicago from his New York concert to visit Johnny at the hospital. “Come back to Seoul with me,” Jaehyun says, the waiting room coffee in his hands a stark contrast to the rolex on his wrist and the black turtleneck that hugs his body. “You’ve been here for so long, even your moms begging me to take you back.” 

Jaehyun’s hand is warm on Johnny’s bare knee. Heat pulsing skin-to-skin, a mortal reminder that they are brothers. Once, they had been a team, on the same path. Now—Jaehyun glances at a girl who’s spying on him surreptitiously from over a magazine. 

“She could just ask for a picture or an autograph,” he grumbles. 

“She probably just thinks you’re handsome, bro,” Johnny says, closing his eyes. He remembers the blood on his baby boy’s skull; being stupid enough to wake up that morning and whine that nothing could be stickier than the air. 

“Should I do anything?” Jaehyun asks. 

Johnny peeks at him through one eye. Jaehyun is frowning at the girl, looking completely at a loss. 

“Take me back to Seoul,” Johnny says. 

Back in Seoul, Jaehyun strong arms Johnny into attending one of his concerts as a “Backstage VIP”—an elite position that had become a euphemism for babysitting in the last year. At the end of the show, when Jaehyun is doing his round of thanks and accepting flowers, Johnny loiters in the backup dancer storage unit.

He’d become slightly enamoured with one of the dancers on stage with Jaehyun, a lithe robot with an innocent looking face that resembles SHINee’s Taemin. It has NCT-JW-MODEL-127 tattooed across the skin of its neck. _Jungwoo,_ Johnny names it in his head, after a kid he used to be a trainee with. They hadn’t talked much while training together, but Jungwoo had cried into his shoulder when they were both kicked out on the same day. All the dancers are realistic, but Jungwoo-bot’s eyes shine with something you might mistake for life. 

The door creaks open behind him, Jaehyun finished his rounds unexpectedly early. “Dude,’ Johnny says, playing with the fringes of Robot Jungwoo’s hair, “This one looks so human.”

“Yeah? You should see the ones back at the lab. I accidentally bowed to one the other day.”

With that voice, Johnny’s heart stutters. He turns around. Even with the good three meters between them, Taeil is so small that Johnny feels like he’s closing him in. “Hey,” he says. “I thought you were performing at an awards show tonight.”

“I was, but…” Taeil trails off, eyes slowly grazing off Johnny to focus on Robot Jungwoo behind him. “Jaehyun said you’d be here.”

“Oh.” Johnny thinks of Lake Michigan. Wonders what it’d be like to drown amongst the stench of sunscreen and wet nylon, so many people who could save him, so many arms he’d have to push away. “You didn’t have to do that. The SBS Drama Awards are huge.”

“I can miss it. I have the Seoul International Drama Awards coming up, anyway.” Embarrassed at the humblebrag, Taeil ducks his head. “It’s…it’s been a good year.”

Looking at Taeil then, at the tan he’d formed over the summer, the red waterline of his eyes, the permed hair that used to fall into a flat fringe that Johnny had to push away if he wanted to kiss him on the forehead, Jungwoo suddenly doesn’t seem human at all. A hollow metal vessel that would never feel for itself what it’s like to have someone be able to skin you raw just by breathing your air. 

So yeah, last year hadn’t been great.

 

-

 

It’s masochistic, but he takes Taeil fishing. 

He’d made an unasked for promise to Taeil years ago—back when the fantasy of whisking him back to Chicago and pressing him into his childhood bed hadn’t seemed so cruel—to show him Lake Michigan. Around this time, Taeil had gone on a trip to Japan with his family and returned uncharacteristically enthused about the alternate life they could lead as fishermen. _”I’m pretty good at it,”_ he had said. _”We can live in a lighthouse by the sea. Take that smile off your face, Johnny! It’s only ‘we’ because I can’t drive the boat myself, can I?”_

They take a dinghy out into the lake, Johnny rowing while Taeil sits at the bow, trailing his fingers along the crystal water. “You’re pretty good at this,” Taeil remarks glumly when they’re sitting with their backs to each other, lines thrown overboard. Johnny’s cooler is filled with—he doesn’t even know what kind of fish it is, they’re nothing like the ones you’d find in Lake Michigan. Taeil has yet to make a catch, and every fifteen minutes or so he pulls his lure out of the water and rubs it against his lifejacket like it’s a CD that just needs a bit of polishing to make it work. 

“Didn’t you say you were good at fishing?” Johnny asks, realising too late what he’s asking. 

Taeil’s brows furrow. “Did I?” Something sinks, and unfortunately, it’s not Johnny’s lure. “I was good at those magnetic fishing games kids play with. Somehow, and I have _no idea_ why, the skills don’t seem to transfer over.”

Johnny shuffles over to Taeil’s side of the boat, leaning forward to examine Taeil’s stance, “Your grip is a little weird,” he says. He chuckles when Taeil looks up at him with offence. “Here, let me show you.” 

He maneuvers himself so he’s sitting just behind Taeil, and can reach his arms around him so their hands overlap on the rod. His legs are killing him; the boat feels like it’s half the size of his body. Taeil hums and leans back into Johnny’s chest, his chestnut brown hair tickling his nose. “Move your grip just a bit forward,” Johnny says, trying to ignore how Taeil smells like Chicago on a early morning, Seoul on a cold night, his mother’s shampoo. Where’s the smell of sweat? Of the insect repellent Taeil would spray himself with during summer? “You can hold the pole in a more stable position, and the fish won’t run away from you.”

And just like that, there’s a tug. Johnny, on instinct, shouts words of encouragement into Taeil’s ear, who starts spinning the reel like someone’s holding a gun to his head. It takes both their combined strength to haul the fish over the gunwale of the boat. It’s a _huge_ one. So comically big Johnny almost laughs. 

Then the high wears off, and as his breathing evens out the world gets smaller until he realises that there’s almost no space between Taeil and him right now. Any parts of their body that aren’t touching are fettered together by a current of electricity that he can’t see, but can feel as if his blood is the conductor. 

“I think I’ve got it, Johnny,” Taeil says. He gestures to the fish, but his eyes are fixated on Johnny’s lips. He moves closer. Johnny can see the sweat along his hairline, gleaming on his collarbone. Taeil lifts his face up. Turns the voltage higher. 

And Johnny blanks out. He doesn’t realise what he’s done until water slaps him across his face and he gasps back into the present, staring in horror at Taeil’s small hands struggling to grab onto the edge of the boat. 

“Fuck,” Johnny swears, scrambling to the edge. He grabs Taeil’s arm, hefting him back onto the dinghy. He doesn’t even give Taeil a second to recuperate, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around to look into his face. “Are you okay? Shit.” 

He pats his hands down Taeil’s body—he doesn’t know why. He’s searching for something, but he doesn’t want to think what for. Taeil knocks his hands back abruptly, with such an unprecedented amount of force that Johnny falls off his knees and onto his butt, sending the boat rocking again. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Taeil cries, shuddering, cheeks flushed red. He’s never seen Taeil so angry before, not in all the years they’ve known each other. “ _Seriously_ , what’s wrong with you?”

 

-

 

On his twenty-fourth birthday, Jaehyun drives them both to SM Entertainment’s Neo Culture Technology Lab. 

“Are we picking Yuta up from work?” Johnny asks, surprised when Jaehyun parks the car at the back of the building. Jaehyun makes a noncommittal noise in response. _”Something like that,”_ he mumbles. 

When Johnny had been a trainee, SM’s Lab was still a skeleton, an ambitious structure of metal and cement surrounded by a chain-link fence. It used to be a game for trainees to squeeze themselves through a break in the barrier, naive about the future, sharing a bottle of soju while hiding in a dirt ditch. Now, Neo Culture Technology Labs stands tall as a Seoul landmark, sleek glass standing out against the city’s variegated skyline. They take the elevator down to the basement, into a large area that resembles a renovated car park. There’s a black arch in the concrete that looks almost like a tunnel, train tracks leading out of it that stop in the middle of the room. Johnny tries to stop and take a closer look, but Jaehyun’s steps are quick and purposeful, and Johnny has no choice but to follow along at his heels. 

They come face to face with a heavy door that looks like you’d need a retina scan to open it, but gives way to Jaehyun pushing it firmly. Behind is a circular chrome lab, bare of anything except a large dome in the middle containing a miniature model town. Johnny is fascinated by it, loses himself so deeply in the detail that he doesn’t realise that Yuta is in the room with them until Jaehyun calls his name. 

Yuta is still in his lab coat—his ID card hanging from his neck with the bad profile shot Yuta loathed—frowning at Johnny. “Is this like a surprise party?” Johnny asks hesitantly. “Cos I gotta say, the company and ambience is a bit... lacking.”

Yuta and Jaehyun look at each other. Johnny is familiar enough with their bullshit that he knows they’re silently nudging the other one to speak first. Whatever psychic war is raging, Jaehyun loses, and he lets out a deep sigh before collecting himself. “We have a surprise birthday present for you.”

Johnny arches an eyebrow. “Did you guys bring me here to probe me because—”

Yuta snorts, he looks less nervous now. “Wow, now I just feel bad for not thinking of that first.” 

“Johnny,” Jaehyun says. He gestures to the dome behind him. Somehow, Yuta must have pressed a button, because the glass illuminates, turning into a screen with text and numbers flickering on it too fast for Johnny to read, even if he had a hope of understanding them. A pale blue silhouette of a human appears and slowly fills in. It’s like Johnny’s watching a speedpaint, and there are still ways in which a human brain and a worn out heart are faster than a computer, because Johnny realises who he’s looking at long before “MOON TAEIL: BETA VER 1.0” flashes across the screen.

“What the fuck is this?”

He turns to Jaehyun and Yuta. He doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing, but they both look to each other cautiously. 

“Maybe we should let you read the birthday card,” Yuta says.

  
  


-

  
  


> **IDOL LOVE PARK**
> 
> DATE YOUR IDOL! SM’S ONE OF A KIND IDOL-FAN INTERACTION!
> 
> Participants take the underground subway from SM’S NCT Labs to SMTOWN, a man-made city built completely underground and populated by your favourite artists! Choose from twenty different narrative streams. Romance your favourite idol in the exciting and cosmopolitan SMTOWN, made up of six different regions for you to choose the perfect setting to have your idol fall in love with you. Meet them in a coffee shop, grow up as next door neighbours in a small suburb, or share an umbrella in a rainy city straight out of an American Romantic Comedy. 
> 
> There may be many fans of one idol. However, thanks to the work of our research team at NCT Labs, during your time with your idol, the idol will only remember you. Lose interest in your love story? No worries. You can choose to refresh and start over. 
> 
> See your idol on TV. Take them out to dinner on the weekend. IDOL LOVE PARK.

  


“Being at the forefront of AI research and development, SM’S NCT Labs are putting a new spin on ‘meet your idols’. The robots in Idol Love Park are the most advanced of their kind, using magnesium-based…” Johnny trails off, the brochure in his hand shaking. His ears are burning; he’s never felt so goddamn ashamed. He thought he was the pillar in their friend group. He was dispensable as an idol—SM gave him the boot when they realised the money spent on a floundering trainee could be better utilised developing their first line of Android-dols—but as a friend, he held pride in his messy human empathy.

Last year hadn’t been great. The love of his young life had left him, and Johnny wasn’t coping. But how bad was it that Yuta and Jaehyun—one guy he had to hold an intervention for to stop him from over-medicating on adderall during his time at KAIST, and another he’d had to provide step-by-step instructions on how to break up with someone tactfully—thought this was the solution? 

“It still in dev now,” Yuta says conversationally. “We’re looking about two months before we can release a beta version to our testers. Stable release, I’d say we’re looking at another seven months, but—”

“Stop, stop, stop!” Johnny snaps. That model city that had looked so beautiful to him at first, he now wants to grab a steel pipe and smash it to bits. “How could you think I’d do this? I could never do this.”

Jaehyun looks alarmed, blinking back in surprise. “But you love him?” 

“Jesus,” Johnny breathes out. “I know SM only kept you because you have the emotional range of a robot, but for _once_ in your life, Jaehyun, can you try and act like a human.” 

Jaehyun sucks in his cheeks, looking away and blowing out a thin stand of air. Johnny regrets his words immediately. “Jaehyun, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I—”

“Look,” Yuta interrupts. “I get it, okay? It’s a lot to take in.”

Johnny shakes his head. “I’m sorry, guys. I don’t know what the hell your thought process was, but I’m sure it came from a good place. But I can’t do this. I don’t want to.”

“It’s going to be released eventually.” Jaehyun says it quietly, still not looking at him, but the implication fills Johnny’s lungs with liquid metal—thick and toxic and so heavy that it’s an effort just to stand upright.

“He’s right,” Yuta says, solemnly. “I’m not allowed to bring anyone down here, you know? I had to pay off Changmin hyung to bust the security cameras. But we wanted you to be the first, to have a few months with him before the beta release.” 

“It’s not him,” Johnny says, hollow. “That’s not Taeil.” 

At this, Yuta smirks wryly. “They’re incredibly realistic, you know. I helped make them and even _I_ can’t always tell them apart.” Johnny thinks about NCT-JW-MODEL-127—the lines of his veins and sheen of his skin—a throwaway prototype stored in a utility shed. Is Robot Taeil, with its soft mouth and high cheekbones, hanging in a closet like a cloak for someone to try on? 

Jaehyun walks towards him, rests his hand on Johnny’s nape and squeezes. “The train leaves tomorrow at 5AM,” he says. “I can help you pick an outfit.” 

 

—

 

“ _Of course_ it’s water resistant, idiot,” Yuta says when Johnny recounts the disaster at the lake. Johnny grunts, miffed, but Yuta rolls his eyes. “Why would we have open water if we needed to put our androids into a bag of rice every time some fucker accidentally tips over a rowboat?” 

It’s true that Johnny had perhaps glossed over the finer details of the day. He’s always been uncertain about whether or not Yuta was surveillancing his time with Taeil, but Yuta knowing what had happened and not commenting on it is an impossibility. And since he also knows that Yuta definitely has the means to monitor them if he wants to, Johnny’s heart blooms in gratefulness at the conscious decision made to grant them privacy. 

“Either way, he was pretty pissed,” Johnny says. He looks down the tunnel. He had a nightmare last night, that while he was waiting for the train this morning, Robot Taeil, with half his skin melted and hanging off the metal skeleton underneath, had stumbled his way out of that tunnel. Wet and furious, sparks igniting from his joints. “Not sure if he wants to see me.”

“All good. Do you want me to wipe last week from its memory?” 

The thought of it, for whatever reason, makes Johnny flinch. “No, it’s fine. Just wanted to let you know that you might have a death on your hands today.”

Yuta narrows his eyes at him. “If you break our million dollar investment, Seo, I’ll kill you.” He saunters back to the lab, ignoring Johnny’s cry of _”Not him! Me!”_

Taeil is playing at a café today, one that was modeled almost exactly after ‘Central Park’ in Friends. He’s clearly still mad at Johnny too, because he looks towards the door once when the bell chimes to indicate a new customer, and then immediately whips his head in the opposite direction once he realises who it is. Technology has really come a long way, Johnny muses as he takes a seat near the window. Humanity has gone from cell phones the size of bricks to humanoid robots programmed to hold grudges. 

When Taeil finishes his set and still doesn’t acknowledge Johnny, despite him clapping loudest and most like a soccer mom, Johnny walks towards him, long legs knocking into a table and almost causing a woman’s coffee to spill. Do these robots actually eat? Or is the food just there for authenticity’s sake? 

“Taeil,” Johnny says, standing at the foot of the small stage as Taeil packs his guitar back into the case. “Can we talk?” 

Taeil pauses, and Johnny wonders if he’s about to tell him to fuck off. Can he swear? SM used to clip a wooden peg on Johnny’s tongue each time he cursed in front of a trainer. But knowing Yuta and the other protozoans working in the engineering team, they'd find a way to pack it in as a hidden feature. 

He doesn’t get an answer, because Taeil’s shoulders slump and he nods like he never had any other choice. “Okay. Follow me.”

Taeil whispers something to the barista on duty—is that _Irene?_ —and beckons Johnny to follow him into the storage room behind the counter. It’s dim inside, and even though it smells like coffee beans, Johnny notices that the only thing in the room with them are some spare wires and a few chairs. 

Taeil closes the door behind them and begins. “Do you not like me?”

Johnny nearly falls apart at the irony. When they were together, Taeil used to tease him with _“Aren’t you embarrassed that you like me so much more than I like you?”_ whenever he got too affectionate. He also remembers, though, when Taeil was still new to SM and they were close but not quite friends, how Taeil would draw into himself when Johnny would flirt with other people in front of him. Something Johnny—teenage and stupid, kind but so, _so_ teenage and stupid—would do on purpose. Karma is cumulative throughout your life. 

“That’s not it.”

“You’d just rather drown me than kiss me?” Taeil is unimpressed, lips thinned into a flat line. 

He’d drown himself for a chance to kiss him again, but how does he make Taeil believe this from a man he’s known for two weeks? Even the Taeil he’d known for five years hadn’t believed it. 

“I just got out of a long relationship with someone I really loved,” Johnny says. Taeil’s expression doesn’t change, but he nods. Johnny takes it as permission to keep going. “He broke up with me because he didn’t see a future. I guess I’m still scarred from it.” 

Taeil is silent for a long moment, then he speaks. “Did you see a future with him?”

Taeil had taught him a technique once. When you’re upset with someone, write them a letter. Write it like you’ll never see them again, and the last they’ll ever hear from you are these words. Write it and put it in an envelope and put that envelope in a spot you won’t remember a week from now. Find it again months later when you’re spring cleaning, and feel vindicated that you were brave enough to send your thoughts out into the world. 

“I did. I saw forever with him,” Johnny admits. Taeil’s face falls, until Johnny continues with, “But when I look at you I see forever too, and that scares the shit out of me.”

So much for being the knight with a red umbrella. The charming meet-cute, the brilliant portrait of a simple unburdened love, mottles until it’s worthless. That was never going to be him, and that was never going to be Taeil—not even this Taeil, no matter what algorithm they use. 

“There’s… something about you,” Taeil says. It’s not a compliment; Taeil sounds confounded, curious. “I don’t believe in soulmates, but-” He cuts himself off with a groan, pushes the heel of his palms into his forehead. “I’m going crazy.” 

“But what?’ Johnny urges, inching closer until Taeil is pushed up against the closed door. 

“But… I don’t even know. You know I’ve never tried to kiss someone first before?” Johnny does know this. He knows this because Taeil had told him after he had initiated their first kiss, drunk and lying in a ditch, the same place where years later a train would be built to transport Johnny miles away, just so he could hear those words again. “God, this is so cheesy,” he laughs, self-deprecating. “But I feel like you’re written into my DNA.” 

When their lips meet, it’s not like the kisses Johnny remembers. But he cradles Taeil’s face in his hands and doesn’t stop. 

 

—

 

It’s at Doyoung’s birthday dinner that Johnny sees Taeil again. Flesh and blood Taeil, who’s skinnier than Johnny remembers him being and wears a facemask and sunglasses when he walks into the restaurant. He takes the seat beside Taeyong at the rectangular table, directly opposite Johnny, who, in shock, drops the meat at the end of his chopsticks onto the table and then offers it to Taeil cheekily when he turns to look at him.

Taeil unhooks his facemask, grinning underneath. “Germs, my favourite seasoning.” 

Johnny wishes Jaehyun were here instead of on his encore tour in Hong Kong. God, he almost wishes Yuta were here too, just so the shame had someone else to lean on, instead of having both its arms looped around Johnny’s neck like a noose. He knows, though, that this burden is his and his alone to drag through this dinner. 

He and Taeil had always been friendly after the break-up, the amiability sometimes making him doubt the gravity of his own heartbreak, even when he’d skipped work three days in a row to stay in bed and count the blades on his ceiling fan over and over again. Maybe if he hated Taeil, or couldn’t bear to look at him, he’d feel less like he might be sick over the charcoal grill whenever they made eye contact. 

Johnny drinks more than he ought to. Taeil makes a joke about him hanging out with too many American college students when he’d moved back to Chicago for those three bleeding months last year, but Johnny is just tipsy enough to be able to laugh without bile threatening to come up. They start to leave the restaurant when a group of young highschool girls come in and can barely suppress their shrieks when spot Taeyong, Taeil, and Doyoung. _“Oh my god! It’s Limitless!”_

“The burden of fame,” Doyoung bemoans, but he’s already taking out a sharpie from one of his pockets. 

“Johnny, you can’t drive like this,” Taeil says as they amble out of the restaurant. He steadies Johnny’s arm as Johnny fumbles with his car keys. 

“I know,” Johnny slurs. He’s usually the responsible one too. When had he become this way? How long had Yuta and Jaehyun spent watching his fall from grace before deciding, hey, this is a guy who’d stick his tongue down a robot’s throat and have it be the highest point of his year. “I’ll call a taxi, I guess.”

Taeil pries the keys out of his fingers. It sends a pleasant buzz through Johnny, reminding him of their overlapping hands on the fishing rod but—no, that wasn’t Taeil was it?. “Don’t worry, my manager dropped me off. I can drive you home.” He pauses, eyes widening as he takes in the steps this will involve—maybe he’s not as nonchalant about all this as Johnny thought he was. Maybe he’s just better at forgetting. “If… that’s okay with you. I can sleep on the couch or something?”

Johnny waves a hand. “It’s all good. I have an air mattress somewhere.” He isn’t going to insult both of them by pretending he’s fine with sharing his bed with Taeil for the night—king sized or not. 

Johnny is more drunk than he’d thought. He’s only half-conscious during the drive back to his apartment; if there’s a tense silence that settles, he’s incapable of feeling it. The elevator is down for maintenance; his wide steps are slow as they climb the stairs, unwittingly pacing themselves with Taeil’s smaller, quick ones. 

He doesn’t know how he agrees to it, but by the time he’s semi-lucid again, he’s lying back on his bed while Taeil takes off his shoes. He watches him struggle to untie Johnny’s unnecessarily convoluted knots—Johnny ties his shoelaces like he’s tying a life buoy to a ship, he’s so scared of tripping over them. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, after all.

He tests the words, saying them silently to himself. Then, he tries them out loud. “I kissed someone.”

Taeil jumps, the action somehow doing the trick of loosening his sneakers enough for Taeil to slip them off. “That’s fine, Johnny,” he says, measured. “You’re allowed to. Are you back together with that girl then?”

“No,” Johnny shakes his head, propping himself up on his elbows. Taeil drops his other foot and ends up just sitting uncomfortably at the edge of the bed, hands tightening into fists on his knees. “I kissed you, that—that.” He’s really going to be sick. “It’s this fucking. Robot thing. It’s this—this town. Some virtual reality—”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Taeil says. Johnny searches every line of his face for something—disappointment, disgust, _“This isn’t going to work out, Johnny.”_

“I’m sorry,” Johnny apologises. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, _so_ sorry. I don’t know why I agreed to it. I have no excuse.”

“No, Johnny—” Taeil bites his lips, he looks broken. “Don’t apologise, please.” Johnny knows Taeil is out of his depth here. Isn’t this why he and Johnny got on so well, because Johnny usually avoids these slobbering emotional breakdowns? “I signed the papers, I gave them permission.”

“You didn’t think I’d—”

“I told Yuta and Jaehyun to give it you.” Taeil says quickly, not giving Johnny time to think. “I was hoping you would.”

Johnny blinks. His vision swims, which frightens him for the full second it takes for him to register that his eyes are watery. “Why?” he croaks, swiping the back of his hand across his eyes.

“I’m so bad at all of this,” Taeil says. “I never want to hurt you. But from the moment they let you go and I debuted, all I’ve been doing is hurting you.”

“The only time you hurt me was when you left me,” Johnny states, honestly. Taeil looks like it’s taking all of his willpower not to flee. “That doesn’t answer my question. Why?”

The way Taeil is looking at him, he’s only seen once before, when he’d broken up with him. It fills him with the same dread and confusion as it did back then. “I hate seeing you without me, Johnny. This is the only way I can give myself to you.”

“You think… this is giving yourself to me?” Maybe Johnny isn’t sober enough to comprehend this, but the idea is so ludicrous to him. “Giving me some bolts and wires that look like you, have your favourite food and colour hardcoded. That hundreds of other people are going to share when it’s released, and I have to try not to think about them when I can only make my bookings to see you three months in between.” He’s trying not to be angry, he has no place to be, but his brain is burning, overheated. 

Taeil shakes his head furiously, growing increasingly agitated as Johnny goes on. ‘No, no, no. I wouldn’t let them do that to me. I only thought of you from the beginning. Yuta and Jaehyun, they have a plan, if you want to keep me just for yourself. You can take me away from there.”

“That’s not you,” Johnny says. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince. “That’s not you, _this_ is you.”

“It’s not me,” Taeil agrees. “But it’s everything you loved about me. I made sure of that. Me, Yuta, and Jaehyun. We worked on it for _months_ , Johnny. The only thing it doesn’t have are my memories, but even then, you can make new ones.”

Johnny wants to protest, wants to shout, but he remembers _’I feel like you’re written into my DNA.’_ He hadn’t just not stopped the kiss, he had been physically unable to pull away. 

“All this trouble,” Johnny murmurs. “Why can’t you just be with me?”

Taeil deflates. “I’ll always be gone before you wake up.” He reaches his hand out, and Johnny takes it between his own, linking their fingers together and marvelling at how well they fit. 

They stay like that for a while, until Taeil’s phone rings from somewhere in the room, and they’re brought down from their world of one hundred hypotheticals, back into the third dimension. “That’s my manager,” Taeil says. He stand and leans down to kiss the crown of Johnny’s head. He rubs his thumb over his eyebrows. 

Johnny closes his eyes, tries to memorise the feeling. Wonders if there’s a way all this, everything in between them, can be stored in 0s and 1s. 

  


—

  


 

 

—

 

 

“I feel like you’re leaving to go pick up your mail-order bride.”

Johnny shoots Yuta a flat look from the window of the carriage. “Don’t be so judgemental, you’re complicit in all of this.” 

“I’m not judging!” Yuta defends. “I’m just saying that’s exactly what it feels like.” 

“Try not to tell him immediately, okay,” Jaehyun says, voice heavy and serious. “He doesn’t know he’s a robot yet, so bring him back here and we can break it to him carefully.”

“You sent him my message, right?” Johnny asks.

“Yep,” Yuta pops the p, just as the train starts its departure, moving back towards the tunnel.

There’s a niggling feeling in the back of his head. A remnant of old Johnny—moral, stubborn, black-and-white—that’s stuck between the gears of this new one. One who’s had most of his parts ripped out and would do anything to fill the space. It’s a unique concoction, heartbreak and desperation. He thinks of his mum, his friends back in Chicago, even his ex-girlfriend—their faces when Johnny brings home Taeil, _this_ Taeil, the way he’d always dreamt of doing.

But everyone back home and the person he used to be, they’re all left behind as the train hurtles forward. 

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for: references to drug use, suicide ideation, and just general... questionable ethics? 
> 
> -lovely recipient, i'm sorry i changed so much of your original fic, especially when it was so cute!! but the nct as robots was the first thing that jumped to mind when i read it and i hope you enjoyed this even a bit. i do not know myself how what started as a slightly sad robot fic turned into the complete breakdown of johnny's psyche...
> 
> \- i'm sure you could tell from the title that i really love using pseudo-science as imagery. drag me. 
> 
> \- ty to the mod for being so kind and patient!! 
> 
> \- also, thanks a billion to [rei](http://archiveofourown.org/users/pancakewars) for helping me so much. from telling me to cut down on the robot metaphors, to pretty much writing some lines for me, you were more a babysitter than a beta ("betasitter"), i couldn't have done it without you ♡ thanks for your endless patience with the useless me~
> 
> \- thanks to everyone else who held my hand through this too!


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